What? Another Freakin Bitcoin Fork – Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Another Bitcoin Fork – Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

We just recovered from the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) user activated hard fork (UAHF) a few months back. And we were awaiting the much anticipated November 2017 SegWit2x fork, where another split is on the horizon (B2X), which would leave us with 3 versions of Bitcoin. Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SegWit2x (B2X).

But there is not a LOT of news focused on this fast upcoming Bitcoin Gold fork, which is scheduled to be implemented on 25October.

So why yet another fork? The Bitcoin community is looking to completely decentralize the Bitcoin network that continues to be monopolized by the mining industry and a few deep pocket miners within the mining community, who have the majority of the hash power at present.

Bitcoin Gold is scheduled for release with the purpose to change Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm, allowing miners to mine Bitcoin with GPUs rather than the big expensive ASICs.

The small miner communities are loving that. The price of GPUs are reasonable and they can mine bitcoins on a smaller scale and still be profitable. Making it possible to mine with GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) is expected to allow more participants to mine, taking away some of the hash power from the BIG DOG miners who have largely cornered and monopolized the Bitcoin market.

As with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) a few months ago, Bitcoin Gold (BCG) will also be a hard fork, with the new tokens expected to launch on 25 October before being open to exchanges starting on 1 November.

The new BTG token is planned to be sold at 10BTG to 1 BTC (which today would be about $480 since Bitcoin is $4800 as this article is being written). Even though there is talk about a BTC ICO (Initial Coin Offering), no dates have yet to be announced and as with Bitcoin Cash, each Bitcoin user, at the time of the fork, will have an equal amount of Bitcoin Gold associated with their private key.

So buy as many bitcoins as you possibly can right now! Keep them stored in a wallet where YOU own the private key. Then you will get FREE bitcoin gold just as you received FREE bitcoin cash.

What is Bitcoin Gold Fork?

On 25 October, Bitcoin is going to see another hard fork that will result in a new cryptocurrency named Bitcoin Gold (BTG). As we saw with Bitcoin Cash a few months ago, existing bitcoin wallet private keys holding Bitcoin balances will receive the same amount in Bitcoin Gold on 1 November. BUT as of today, it may be a number of weeks before Bitcoin Gold will be tradable which means you won’t be able to buy or sell immediately.

Developers, miners and a number of key contributors including Jack Liao, the CEO of Hong Kong mining manufacturer LightningAsic, are behind Bitcoin Gold, with other parties involved including Chinese mining tycoon and owner of Bitcoin news portal Jinse.com and the project’s anonymous lead developer, H4x3.

H4x3 describes Bitcoin gold as a real blockchain to pilot Bitcoin upgrades. Ultimately, the purpose of Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is to compete with Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum and other GPU mineable coins, by bringing down the current Bitcoin mining monopolies and increasing centralization in order to serve and protect the Bitcoin world.

Supporters of Bitcoin Gold hold the view that the best crypto engineers are working on Bitcoin Core and for this reason, Bitcoin Gold will try to follow Core as much as possible.

The biggest change to the code in Bitcoin Gold is that it uses a different mining algorithm. This algorithm is resistant to ASIC chips, called Equihash. Again, this means that the smaller miners can participate in the mining of Bitcoin Gold by setting up GPU mining rigs/machines.

Similar to Ethereum, the use of GPUs will be needed to mine Bitcoin Gold in place of Bitcoin’s current Asics mining machines, which have been blamed for the centralization of Bitcoin.

With Ethereum’s planned switch from Proof of Work (POW) mining to Proof of Stake (POS) next year, Bitcoin Gold developers’ decision to move away from Bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm to the Equihash algorithm is a timely one. Because all of those GPU mining machines on the market will now have a hopefully profitable coin to mine other than Ether.

Other anticipated changes from Bitcoin include an alteration to the adjustment time. Bitcoin has the level of difficulty to solve a block adjusted every 2-weeks and, with unstable hashpower experienced since the Bitcoin Cash fork, Bitcoin Gold will have the level of difficulty adjusted to every block found.

With this said, the near future won’t bode well for Altcoins (Alternatives to Bitcoin cryptocurrencies). Many investors and traders may very well sell their altcoins for bitcoins in order to cash in on the FREE Bitcoin Gold (BTG) they will receive. Yes … you will receive the same amount of FREE Bitcoin Gold for the value of the Bitcoin you hold in your wallet where you own the private key.

Without going into details about the technology, all I have to say is this.

If you do NOT own a private key to your bitcoin wallet, then MOVE YOUR BITCOINs to a Wallet where you own the Private Key. If you don’t know what I am talking about, sometimes it is the 12 words used to secure your bitcoin wallet. You may hear your private key called a “mnemonic phrase”.

You do NOT have a private key associated with your Coinbase wallet, Coinpayments wallet, freewallet.org and many others. THEY OWN YOUR BITCOINS!

The more I write, the more I will continue telling everyone of my readers to OWN YOUR BITCOINS. How? Get a bitcoin wallet where YOU OWN THE PRIVATE KEY. It is time to Grow Up and Graduate by being responsible for your Bitcoins!

Faith Sloan better known as "Queen Wiki" or "Crypto Queen" is a cryptocurrency enthusiast and trader. She has been a software engineer for 40 years and builds Decentralized Apps (DApps) on the Ethereum blockchain and plays with Tech toys. When she is not teaching, researching and writing about Cryptocurrencies, she's traveling the world and feeding her eating hobby.